*sigh* This story doesn't surprise me in the least. I do wish it were different, but unfortunately, the police are more corrupt than the gangsters there. Bribes, more commonly known as "Coffee money", are the norm. Now to hear the a police officer is actually involved directly in the criminal behavior, no surprise-lah.

Bag snatcher turns out to be policeman Tue Sep 11, 8:39 AM ET



KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - A thief chased and caught by a group of Malaysians after he snatched a woman's handbag turned out to be a policeman, a newspaper said Tuesday.

Bystanders gave chase on hearing the screams of a housewife at a coffee shop in Ipoh, capital of the northern state of Perak, when the thief grabbed her handbag, the New Straits Times said.

The man was taken to a police station, where a check of his identification papers showed he was a policeman.

Perak police chief Zulkifli Abdullah confirmed the suspect was a policeman, but declined further comment, saying police would investigate, the paper added.

After 10 years and this is all???? What is interesting is that custody of the children was given to the wife - not a social norm in this society. Since men are traditionally the breadwinner - they are generally awarded fully custody of the children (ie. they are his property) and the wife is lucky to retain her jewelry and clothing.

Bigamist ordered to give pig and buffalo

Wed Aug 22, 10:53 AM ET

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - A Malaysian villager who took a second wife has been ordered by a court to compensate his first wife and their children with a buffalo and a pig, an official said Wednesday.

The Native Court in Penampang district on Borneo island annulled the man's 10-year marriage to his first wife and granted her custody of their three children Tuesday, said District Native Court Chief Innocent Makajil, who presided over the panel deciding the case.

"It is a symbolic punishment because he violated his people's customs by marrying more than once," Makajil said by telephone.

The identities of the couple are not being revealed due to a request by the wife, Makajil said.

The man, a self-employed 30 year old, is from Borneo's Kadazan-Dusun indigenous community. His second wife, whom he married earlier this year, is a Muslim, and he converted from Christianity to Islam, Makajil said.

Polygamy is rare within the group, he added.

Ants test nonviolence of Buddhist monks


KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Buddhist monks, who are bound by faith to nonviolence, are grappling with how to rid a temple of a severe ant infestation without killing the insects.

Stinging red ants have plagued the Hong Hock See Temple in northern Penang state for a year, causing one worshipper to be bitten so badly last month that he had to receive hospital treatment, said Elma Lin, a temple volunteer worker.

A temple disciple tried using a vacuum cleaner to gather up the ants before freeing them in a nearby forest, but the method failed to purge the insects, Lin said.

"We haven't found a solution so far," Lin said. "Nothing has worked."

The temple's chief monk, Boon Keng, was quoted by The Star newspaper as saying that the monks had to "respect other living things" in the temple.

"When an ant drops on you, you must not flick it away or blow on it," he told the newspaper. "If you do, it will bite to hold on. You just have to shake it off."

The newspaper published a photograph of Boon Keng standing beside a sign at the temple that read: "Beware poisonous ants. Do not sit under the tree."

The decades-old temple has more than 10 monks living there and hundreds of devotees, Lin said.

Man compensated for being stuck inside Malaysia Fri Feb 23, 10:33 AM ET



KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - A retired British soldier who said he was "falsely imprisoned" in Malaysia for 16 years after authorities seized his passport has won about $860,000 in damages, newspapers said Friday.

Ronald Beadle had sued Malaysia's tax office after it confiscated his passport in December 1981 to recover outstanding taxes, a move that barred him from leaving the country. The authorities finally stopped impounding his passport in 1998, though Beadle had settled in Malaysia and remained.

"His mind and self-esteem has been injured for more than 16 years," the Star newspaper quoted a High Court judge as saying when she ruled in favor of the 69-year-old from Derbyshire.

The judge said the tax office had acted arbitrarily and unreasonably in seizing the passport. But she did not think that Beadle had been "falsely imprisoned" as he had claimed.

Beadle was sent to Malaysia in 1961 to serve as part of a British army force stationed there. He later decided to settle down in the country and found a job with a helicopter company.

Beadle, whose Malaysian wife died three years ago, said he was not totally overjoyed with the ruling.

"No amount of money could have compensated the loss of 5,968 days when my passport was seized," the New Straits Times quoted him as saying.

You can only truly appreciate this unless you've ever been in a Malaysian toilet. "Wet" does not mean clean and the use of cleaning supplies is always optional. Unheard of, I think is a better term. I just find it interesting that they have to teach it at University to change the culture...

Malaysia weighs college bathroom courses

Thu Feb 8, 1:55 AM ET



KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - It's never too late for toilet training. Some Malaysian colleges may soon offer courses on how to keep public restrooms clean, the national news agency reported Thursday.

The effort is meant to help Malaysia's public lavatories become as hygienic as those in countries such as Britain and Singapore, Deputy Housing and Local Government Minister Robert Lau was quoted as saying by Bernama news agency.

"Clean toilets cannot merely be judged by the eyes," Lau was quoted as saying. "This matter also involves the use of cleaning equipment, soap, fragrances and proper tissues."

Courses would involve managing washrooms by the highest standards in design and sanitation technology, said Lau.

Malaysia's government recently said it wanted to start a "toilet revolution" in a country where public restrooms have long nauseated citizens and tourists with their lack of basic items such as toilet paper, soap and sometimes even toilet seats.

Lau said his ministry plans to soon introduce a system for the public to lodge complaints about filthy toilets via cell phone text messages.

Other recent measures have included setting up modern self-cleaning toilets in popular shopping districts of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's largest city, and scrapping the business licenses of restaurants found to have foul lavatories.

You figure she could have walked back by now

Woman who got on wrong buses 25 years ago reunited with family


Updated: 3:20 p.m. PT Feb 6, 2007

BANGKOK, Thailand - A 76-year-old Malay Muslim woman from southern Thailand who got on the wrong bus 25 years ago and ended up living at the other end of the country has been reunited with her family, officials and domestic media said Tuesday.

Unable to speak, read or write Thai, Jaeyaena Beuraheng boarded a bus in Malaysia thinking it was bound for Narathiwat, one of three Muslim-majority provinces in Buddhist Thailand's far south.

Instead, she ended up 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) to the north in Bangkok. Her predicament grew worse when she boarded a bus she thought was heading south only to end up in Chiang Mai, another 700 kilometers to the north, the Nation newspaper reported.

She eked out a living as a beggar for five years before being arrested in 1987 and put into a center for homeless people in a nearby province, where she has remained ever since.

She was finally reunited with her eight children — who were told she had been run over by a train — after three students from Narathiwat came to work at the center and spoke to her.

"It was only when the students in Muslim clothes visited her and she started chatting to them that we realized she wasn't mute," center director Jintana Satjang told Reuters.

The woman had been known as "Mrs. Mon" because the center’s staff thought her mutterings sounded like Mon, a tribal language in neighboring Myanmar, she added.

Thailand's three southernmost provinces were annexed by Bangkok a century ago and remain culturally distinct from the rest of the country. Eighty percent of the population are Muslim and speak Malay as a first language.

Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 26 (Reuters Life!) - Guard dogs protecting a fruit orchard in Malaysia have met their match -- a 7.1-metre-long (23-ft-long) python that swallowed at least 11 hounds before it was finally discovered by villagers.

"I was shocked to see such a huge python," orchard-keeper Ali Yusof told the New Straits Times in an article published beneath a picture of the captured snake, which was almost long enough to span the width of a tennis court and as thick as a tree trunk.

Villagers, of Kampung Pagoh, in Malaysia's southern state of Johor, did not harm the snake, which was tied to a tree then handed to wildlife officials, the paper said on Friday.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070126/od_nm/malaysia_python_dc_1

Maybe I'm just becoming jaded not living there anymore....

Hot spell blamed for ailments

PENANG: More people are falling sick, from Bayan Baru to George Town and from Bukit Mertajam to Nibong Tebal, because of the hot
weather.

Well, hello??? It's on an tropical island people! Duh! It's 95 degrees - all day -- every day. They only call it a hot spell because it's not raining as much. It still rains every day, just not for hours like it does in monsoon season.

They complain that Panadol medicines are being increasingly taken. Well, it's a crappy med. anyhow. Doesn't work worth diddly squat - and to ask a pharmacist there, Advil is the work of the devil....*chuckle*

Ok, enough. Now I remember why I stopped reading the hometown paper online....I need to stop reading it again...

Are they serious? They can't even come up with their own original orang hutan-lah? That means wild person - where English gets its orangutan. Eco-tourism is a new "thing" in Malaysia, probably since just before the started filming the original Survivor on Pilau Tiga, but to claim Johor has a Bigfoot? For heaven's sake..they say the orang asli have seen him, but I think they play some kind of joke. If the orang asli have seen him, they could have trapped him. They can be fierce if necessary or they wouldn't survive out in the remote kampungs like that. Maybe this explains why no one has applied for any one of the 500 permits seeking the Bigfoot - no one else with half a brain in their head believe it either.

What if Bigfoot threw a party and no one came?
Malaysia gets no takers for 500 permits to explore for mythical beast

The Malaysian Forestry Department says there are no takers for permits on offers to explore a protected forest for the mythical creature, despite initial excitement over reported sightings of the beast, The Star newspaper reported Wednesday.

Authorities printed 500 application forms anticipating a rush, but none has been filled, Che Hashim Hassan, the department's director in the southern state of Johor, was quoted as saying.

The Malaysian media has been gripped by Bigfoot fever since November, when fish farm workers reported seeing three giant human-like creatures in the Endau Rompin park in Johor. They also claimed to have seen a gigantic footprint.

Park officials combed the site but found no physical evidence of a Bigfoot. However, they recorded more reports of sightings from aboriginal villagers who live on the park's fringes.

"We thought that with all the interest in Bigfoot, we would have a lot of inquiries from the public," Che Hashim said. "However, this is not the case."

Tourism officials said they planned to use the interest in Bigfoot to draw tourists to Malaysia.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11729373/